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Loading... Midnight's Children (1981)by Salman Rushdie
I definitely can understand why Midnight's Children won the Best of the Booker. What a great book! This is my first Salman Rushdie, but definitely not my last. I enjoyed learning so much about the partitioning of India, Pakistan, and Bengladesh - and the writing - so lyrical and clever. This is a 532 page epic novel, written in the style of The Tin Drum, and a chronicle of India's freedom from British rule and the ensuing social and political climate. Narrated in shifting styles and switching from first to third person, the writing is an eclectic mix of humor, terror, sarcasm, fantasy, and loaded with metaphorical descriptions and character development that follows the human condition. It is an intellectual effort, written by a true wordsmith and deserving of upper level awards for writing. Having said that, it may well tire casual readers who are not willing to spend time and savor the narrative, style and skill of Salman Rushdie. I am disappointed not to have been able to finish this, the first Booker Prize winner I haven't loved. I plugged along to about page 150 but was finding the reading experience so annoying and unpleasant that I had to give up. Part of the problem, possibly a large part, is that I don't enjoy allegorical fiction where the plot and personalities pretty much serve only to support the allegory. Midnight's Children is not just an allegory, it is an intensely complicated one into the bargain. Six hundred and some pages of that is not something I'm prepared to endure. The lead character keeps saying that to know him you have to know the whole world, but, despite my recognising the quality of the writing and appreciating some of the humour and imagery, the world presented has not grabbed me. I have changed to a David Malouf novel and am a much, much happier reader as a result. You can read my review of Midnight's Children over at my blog (contains some spoilers): http://www.rulethewaves.net/blog/?p=2098
Midnight's Children is a teeming fable of postcolonial India, told in magical-realist fashion by a telepathic hero born at the stroke of midnight on the day the country became independent. First published in 1981, it was met with little immediate excitement. "The literary map of India is about to be redrawn. . . . What [English-language fiction about India] has been missing is . . . something just a little coarse, a hunger to swallow India whole and spit it out. . . . Now, in 'Midnight's Children,' Salman Rushdie has realized that ambition."
References to this work on external resources.
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